


Found

by f_m_r_l



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Epistolary, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 04:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/f_m_r_l/pseuds/f_m_r_l
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson is immortalized. </p><p>Being immortal carries its own set of problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Found

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Unsettled for betaing. 
> 
> The work takes into account some recent research into memory, and also some personal observations of people who have been reunited after an extended period out of each other's lives.
> 
> Posted to LJ 9/17/2011

_from John Watson’s Journal, kept on a high security USB drive in his pocket_  
  
9 Aug. 2010

 

I've finished watching the last episode of _Sherlock_ and reading the 'blog' entries. Some shows on the telly take advantage of cliffhangers more than Dickens ever did; he never went a year between installments.  
  
This Watson appears rather dim for a doctor and inarticulate for a writer, but less so than many previous Watsons. A second set of shows means there's still room for character development. Perhaps he'll even learn to type as the series goes on. Otherwise, BBC's John Watson should get some tips from Shelock on _texting_ his entries in.  
  
I suspect the lack of skills is a result of overdoing the "not as bright as Sherlock" bit. But I'm glad to see that the man is a crack shot and his heart can readily find the right place, even when his fingers can't.  
  
At times it astonishes me that people continue to look to those stories of mine, long past the time the public has commonly ceased to read of Poe's Dupin or the rollicking sea adventures I so enjoyed. My stories have proven adaptable. People take what they will of them, stressing this aspect or that until it suits their needs. At times only the only familiar thing in their telling is the occasional name. In the end, they are the public's stories. (I think Oscar Wilde may have said something to that effect regarding the ownership of fiction, or stolen it from someone who did. But my memory is not as long as my years, and it's generally somewhat safe to attribute something to Wilde.)  
  
I should be more flattered, perhaps. Still, I continue to be the same writer. And I continue to write mysteries, adventures, and other such mass market paperback matter, which keeps me in food and rent but not in laurels. So I mustn't let ideas of greatness go to my head.  
  
My memory of what I was actually like when I was Doctor Watson, Sherlock Holmes's Boswell, has faded. Holmes would say that I never properly observed it in the first place. And the entirety of the "original" collection of stories has influenced my memory though I full well know that the latter half of them were complete fictions.  
  
Could I even recognize Holmes if he were to walk through my door today? His disguises always baffled me. I fancy I am less likely to take things at face value these days. Time might do what costume couldn't, but perhaps my soul would recognize his.  
  
Once again I've fallen into romanticism. Here I will completely blame it on Holmes for having left me without him for over a century; I'm bound to give in to the occasional bad habit on my own.

 

* * *

  
_on a sticky note attached to a train ticket slid under John Watson's door_  
  
I know about you, who and what you are. Meet me.

* * *

  
_a letter written with a fountain pen on high quality paper, afterwards burned quite thoroughly_  
  
My Dearest Holmes,  
  
That one thing — the fact of your being my dearest — is built into my very foundation. It is as integral to me as the ruins of Londinium are to the foundation of our city, if as erratically hidden by time. You have been, are, and always will be my dearest Holmes.  
  
Experts periodically exhibit pieces of those Roman relics in order to limn the ghostly outlines of what the city once was, or at least to sketch the current theories of their form. So have my stories, the battered remains of a portion of my memories, been exhibited with fresh recreations of what might have been our selves.  
  
There is now yet another set of Sherlock Holmes stories. This one has been set in ‘modern’ times. It features a Holmes who has all of your weaknesses — coldness, vanity, haughtiness, lack of consideration, fits of depression, slovenly habits — and of your virtues only your genius.  
  
I am sure that you were not like the current BBC portrayal. But my certainty rests mostly on my own work; memories become the stories we tell ourselves, until we only have the memories of the stories we’ve told ourselves. People have been making up stories about you, starting with my agent Mr. Doyle, ever since you failed to come home from Reichenbach. Each one of those stories I see wears away a little of my memory of who you were, seamlessly fills in the gaps of my memory with spun fantasy. As to what you would be today, I can only wonder. I know I have changed.  
  
But always you would remain my dearest Holmes.  
  
Yours most sincerely,  
  
John H. Watson  
  
P.S. It seems I may have a blackmailer. I wish you could be by my side this time.  
  
JHW

* * *

  
_from John Watson's Journal, kept on a high security USB drive in his pocket_  
  
18 August 2010

 

Blackmail, after all this time. I've lived so long without any problems in that direction, developed the habits of so many precautions, that I'd come to dismiss discovery as an imminent threat.  
  
Nobody else has ever known about me. Holmes died at Reichenbach, my wife passed away, and feeling twice widowed I came adrift, traveling to London, back to Scotland, off to the Continent. I suppose I was looking for somewhere that would feel like home. Nobody else knew me long enough to see that I hadn't aged since my 'middle' years, never became ill, and healed quickly. It was a long while before I looked at _myself_ closely enough to observe any of those.  
  
I've had no sign of why I changed, and very little notion of exactly when. There were no mystical ceremonies, no obscure herbs ( _Radix pedis diaboli_ being an invention of Doyle's), nothing particularly unusual about my parentage, no unprecedented appetites for blood or murder or any such thing. There is simply today, and tomorrow, and the day after that.  
  
The years after my discovery held enough turmoil and time for me to find ways to become a new person. War threw everything into disarray for everyone, and what was one more displaced person emerging from the chaos? Eventually I learned to be good at it, learned where to go to start again or, more importantly, where not to go. It was dangerous. I also learned that I had become incredibly difficult to permanently kill.  
  
So I continued on as one of a series of John Watsons. John Watson the soldier, John Watson the doctor, John Watson the editor, John Watson the English tutor, John Watson the war correspondent....it never seemed necessary to change from such a common name. It's been a comfortable name, a homely name, a name for the person I want others to think I am.  
  
Perhaps this blackmailer doesn't know any of that. Perhaps he only knows... what, some other secret? I've made other secrets deliberately scarce in my life. My sexual orientation? News of my bisexuality would make little enough difference to the career of a midlist author with a vaguely loyal but incurious following. That I have falsified my documents? That would be bad enough, but less complicated than if someone knew why.  
  
I have survived long enough in hazardous enough circumstances to know that I will survive the anticipation. But even though the years have seemed swifter, the time remaining until that meeting feels like it is taking forever.

 

* * *

  
_from an email to John Watson's current literary agent_  
  
...I'm glad that "The Case of the Kidnapped Cat-sitter" is doing so well. But do you really think that the public's appetite for books with cats solving mysteries is going to continue? I'm amazed that the reading populace has found room for even one more inquisitive feline!  
  
We could try something different, something more timeless. My next mystery isn't due for another year. I could write one that wasn't a cozy, perhaps under a new pseudonym. How does 'Justin Walker' sound to you? A new series could bring in a younger audience. A less faddish sub-genre could keep the book of interest to people downloading copies onto their e-readers long past the sell-by date for the average paperback.  
  
Speaking of books sold as downloads, we need to talk about the Jennifer Whittemore romances. I know that the Amish Romances you've proposed are a growing trend, but I'm not sure it's the right fit for 'Jennifer'. There's information about even the Amish online these days. But I've run into previous problems when writing stories set in cultures with which I am unfamiliar....

* * *

  
_from John Watson's Journal, kept on a high security USB drive in his pocket_  
  
21 August 2010

I boarded the train with some trepidation.  
  
I am not generally a nervous man. But nearly every person on board that train looked like a potential threat. That bedraggled student lounging against the window — could she have been researching too thoroughly in old archives? The businessman in the charcoal tailored suit — he looked like a person who might have a great many connections. The balding priest — surely nobody really looked that innocuous in this day and age, and he'd have access to all sorts of birth and death records, maybe noticing something while helping people with their genealogies.  
  
As I was surrounded by so many suspicious looking people, it was no wonder I hadn't noticed the man across from me. Upon later inspection I would find that his jeans were a common brand, his button down shirt of an unobtrusive blue, his jacket of a colour and cut I might have seen on half a dozen men that day. His hair was short enough to be unexceptional, long enough to be somewhat flexible in style, and worn as though it had been pushed aside before air drying. He was a tall man, but not exceptionally so.  
  
He leaned towards me and, with a twinkle in his eye and a carrying voice said "I'm so sorry. I'd thought it was only _sexually_ transmitted. Nobody had said that you could come down with it simply by being _close_ to me." The student, the clergyman, everyone else at our end of the car quickly found somewhere else to be while I stared in shock at the rangy figure in the opposite seat.  
  
His dancing eyes were storm clouds reflected in polished silver. (I am, as a writer of romances, allowed a considerable amount of leeway on the color of his eyes. His hands we shall discuss at another juncture.) His face was as pale and sharply carved as it had ever been, but lit with the type of relaxed smile I'd never before seen him wear. And he continued to wear that smile as I cursed him with a century and a half's worth of practice, drawing heavily on my experience as a soldier to do so. The crinkles at the corner of his eyes only became more insufferable.  
  
"It's amazing how easy it still is to underestimate your resources," was his only immediate response.  
  
One simply does not start brawls upon a train. But I had all I could do to restrain myself to hissing through my teeth "That meretricious display was beneath you." His audacity failed to astound me; he had always treasured the big reveal, and reviled sentiment. But this... this was too much.  
  
And I didn't have to put up with it. He was no immediate threat. As the train pulled into the station I rose, and I was the first one out the opening doors.  
  
Time. This all needs time. And, after all, we have all the time in the world.

* * *

  
_a letter that had been shredded, crumpled, and stuffed into John Watson's compost bin_  
  
Dear John,  
  
I'm deeply sorry that it has been so long. When I came back from Switzerland, you were gone. You'd moved to the country with your wife, leaving our old lives behind in the hands of your agent and my brother. There was no reason to think that you would not have a quiet, happy, and normal life with her. And thinking of your life with her was distracting me from my work. So I lost track of you; it was easy enough to do considering the number of people with your name.  
  
It is my dearest hope that you will not throw away all that was between us. It is obvious to me in a number of ways that we still care greatly for each other. Nothing would make me happier than to get together for coffee and explain my reasoning. But I am willing to wait until you are ready. My business card is enclosed; you will see that I have changed my name for purposes that will be readily apparent to you.  
  
Yours most sincerely,  
  
S

* * *

  
_on a tattered business card found in John Watson's jacket pocket_  
  
Jack Sherrinford  
Consultant  
  
020 9876 5431  
consultant@jacksherrinford.com

* * *

  
_a "missed connections" ad, 27 August 2010_

  
I was Holmes, you were Watson, the only one to see my heart. Norbury. Please contact me.

* * *

  
_a note left in John Watson's laptop bag, found the evening of 29 August 2010_

  
At least let me get a blood sample. I am still investigating the causes.

* * *

  
**To:** Jack Sherrinford consultant@jacksherrinford.com  
 **From:** John Watson jwatson@silvermail.co.uk  
 **Date:** 30 August, 2010, 10:15 AM  
 **Subject:** Where should the restraining order be sent?

  
"Jack",  
  
If my notes are to be trusted, you once posited that a sufficiently observant person could extrapolate the existence of Niagara Falls from a drop of water. Your exceptional mind could have found me long ago, had you been so inclined.  
  
The friend I loved would never have deserted me for so long.  
  
Someone once told me that my entire body of work could be considered as a love letter to you. She didn't know to whom she was speaking at the time, of course, but she was in a way right. How bitter to have one's love letters published, to have them known by everyone, and then to find that the object of that love was false.  
  
Piss off. And go to hell.  
  
Sincerely,  
John

* * *

  
**To:** Jack Sherrinford consultant@jacksherrinford.com  
 **From:** John Watson jwatson@silvermail.co.uk  
 **Date:** 23 December, 2010, 12:15 PM  
 **Subject:** Stop sending gifts

  
"Jack",

  
The notes you attached to the gifts show that you have missed the point. Your ability to send gifts I would like or find useful do _not_ prove that you have always known me better than I knew myself, or that I should "stop all this nonsense and resume [my] place by [your] side".  
  
And, no, I don't think that couples counseling would help.  
  
John

* * *

  
**To:** John Watson jwatson@silvermail.co.uk  
 **From:** Jack Sherrinford consultant@jacksherrinford.com  
 **Date:** 6 January 2011, 12:25 AM  
 **Subject:** Please  
  
Dear John,  
  
A friend of mine has asserted than an explanation of the feelings involved is often helpful in these cases.  
  
When you got married, I was jealous and felt abandoned. Though I could still count on you from time to time, I had no doubts about who was the most important person in your life. But still you came with me to Switzerland, giving me a chance to say farewell, as those with our condition must do so often.  
  
I really was most grievously injured at Reichenbach. By the time I healed, collected my resources together, and returned to London, you and Mary had left. I didn't find out until years later that it was for Mary's health. I pictured you happy, and happier because I didn't keep pulling you away from her side.  
  
And I did my best not to think of you again. I excelled at it, doing so well that I didn't begin to notice that you might still be alive until fairly recently. If it had occurred to me to imagine that you shared my condition, I would have imagined Mary with you, still providing to the best of her ability the happy domesticity you sought. I actually understand very little about our condition. But I do know that I have only before seen it transmitted between people who were lovers in every sense of the word. If Mary was one of us, then she would still be by your side.  
  
But she was not. I assumed that Mary's absence had left you free to return to my side, where in the deepest parts of my being I know you belong. It was arrogant of me. But you have seldom seen me humble.  
  
I'm prepared to work on that if there's a chance it will bring you back to me.  
  
Yours,  
Jack

* * *

  
_from John Watson's Journal, kept on a high security USB drive in his pocket_  
  
9 March 2011

...It was probably worth it to see the expression on Holmes's face when the counselor started talking about Holmes's difficulty in communicating emotional needs and the necessity for remedial work in that field before we could expect to make any progress....

* * *

  
_a text message to John Watson from "Jack Sherrinford", 2:30 PM, 15 June 2011_

  
I was wrong. I'm sorry. And I love you.

* * *

  
_a text message from John Watson to "Jack Sherrinford", 3:12 PM, 15 June 2011_

  
You got them in the right order this time, without making demands in exchange. Thank you. Give me time.

* * *

  
_a text message from John Watson to "Jack Sherrinford", 5:43 PM, 30 July 2011_

  
Yes. I would be happy to "assist [you] in and distract [you] from [your] work." In what manner did you wish to be distracted?

* * *

  
**To:** Jack Sherrinford consultant@jacksherrinford.com  
 **From:** John Watson jwatson@silvermail.co.uk  
 **Date:** 4 August 2011  
 **Subject:** We could afford it together.  
  
My estate agent called. She has a cozy stone and timber cottage in Sussex with an excellent view of the downs, established gardens, and a village two miles away that has a pub and a Saxon church. It would be perfect for your apiaries. There are brick fireplaces in the bedroom, sitting room, and study. I believe that between the two of us we could afford it.  
  
Cheers,  
John  
  
/ sent from my mobile

* * *

  
**To:** John Watson jwatson@silvermail.co.uk  
 **From:** Jack Sherrinford consultant@jacksherrinford.com  
 **Date:** 4 August 2011  
 **Subject:** Re: We could afford it together.  
  
Do be sensible, John. I abhor the countryside and believe the fancy about beekeeping was something your agent slipped into your work before sending it on to the editor. I would perish of ennui within two weeks.  
  
Meet me at my office; my estate agent has found a flat on Marylebone Road, close by the Royal Academy. Its proximity to Madame Tussauds aside, I believe it should suit us perfectly.  
  
Yours,  
Jack

* * *

  
_a text message from John Watson to "Jack Sherrinford"_  
  
The estate agent called. They accepted our offer. We have the flat! -JW

* * *

  
_a text message from "Jack Sherrinford" to John Watson_  
  
Stop signing your texts in that asinine way.  
  
My boxes will remain in storage until we can secure appropriate transportation. Some contents are breakable, explosive, or contagious.  
  
Dinner at the usual time in the usual place.

* * *

  
_a text message from John Watson to "Jack Sherrinford"_  
  
You always say the most romantic things. Love you, honey.

* * *

  
_a text message from "Jack Sherrinford" to John Watson_  
  
You, too.

 


End file.
